Discovering hardware design

By Janette Neuwahl Tannen [email protected] 08-28-2025

Ivy Enyenihi began to think about a career in technology during high school, when she took a coding class and appreciated the rational way that computer programs are written.

"I loved how writing code taught me to think in a more logical way, and it pushed me to explore different areas of the field," said Enyenihi, who is now a junior at the University of Miami.

That interest drew her to the University's College of Engineering, where Enyenihi is now studying computer engineering. It was in her digital design courses that Enyenihi began to think about creating computer hardware, and while looking for internships last year, she applied to Microsoft, even though she thought it was a long shot. After meeting with some Microsoft staff, her interest was piqued by a silicon engineering position because it would allow her to use some of the strategies she learned in the digital design class.

Soon, Enyenihi was offered a summer internship in silicon engineering, where she would be verifying computer chip designs and functionality for those chips that are placed in Microsoft products such as XBox, its cloud computing platform Azure, and others.

She moved to Redmond, Washington, just outside of Seattle for the three-month experience, made new friends through the internship, and came back energized about how she will tackle her future job search.

"This summer made me even more excited to keep learning and see where computer engineering can take me," said Enyenihi, a Stamps Scholar supported by the Office of Academic Enhancement, and part of a winning team at the Horizon AI Hackathon, for developing R.I.P.E., an app to combat food waste.

What team did you work with this summer?

I was on a team called Azure hardware systems and infrastructure team. It is a really big organization within Microsoft, with a lot of people who are based in Redmond, but many staff are also working from other locations.

What exactly is silicon engineering?

All the logic of computers is based on "gates." These gates direct logic to become numbers, which translate into physical actions on a computer chip. So, silicon engineers can write code that will become gates that will turn into physical parts on the computer chip.

Silicon engineering is the process of designing a physical component of a computer chip. So, in all computer chips, it is used to design gates on the chip, which translates to the individual computer chip's function.

What were some of your daily responsibilities?

I had a project to develop a test bench, which helps to make sure a custom chip is working properly, so I am coding and testing toward that goal.

I was also working on a custom accelerator, which is supposed to offload some of the work of a CPU, or the "brain" of the computer. We were working on this to help the computer servers perform better and to improve efficiency.

That's what most of my focus was on daily. But I also attended to a lot of intern events because they offered something almost daily, with professional growth offerings, and a lot of networking-with both other interns and full-time Microsoft employees.

How do you think this experience will benefit you in your college and career journey?

Every day, I learned so much at Microsoft. Outside of the technical knowledge I've gained is an awareness about what the technology industry is like and what opportunities there are for a computer engineer. And the nice thing about Microsoft being so large is there are so many people who have worked different places that I feel like I have learned a lot about the field in general, which has helped me to understand what I can do after college.

Also, if I did not have this internship I wouldn't have learned things that I didn't even know I should be asking questions about.

Any tips you have for students looking for internships in this industry?

Prepare for interviews. I prepared with associate professor Steven Cerrone from the Miami Herbert Business School, who I met while taking classes for my minor in management. He helped me to be open to brutal feedback because it's an opportunity to do better on the real interview.

Also, you never know what the best opportunity is for you, so always be open-minded. Initially, I applied for the Microsoft Explore internship, which was more about product management and software development, then the company recommended other internships.

When I saw the silicon engineering position, it sounded interesting, and it described things similar to my design classes. So I applied and got the interview and then the position-which was really unexpected, because that was not my original plan. But it's funny how it worked out, and this was a lot more hardware focused, which is what I like.